Still in the Passover mood? ‘Exagoge’ is your Seder on steroids
Now at La MaMa, an immersive production draws from the oldest Jewish play
Moses (James Rodgers) parts the Red Sea in Edward Einhorn and Avner Finberg’s Exagogue. Photo by Richard Termine
By PJ Grisar May 2, 2024
Why is this night different from all other nights?
On this night, at La MaMa in the East Village, we may be seated onstage, swilling Manischewitz from a silver goblet and dividing our attention between an illustrated Haggadah, a dramedy about an interfaith couple and an operatic retelling of a a 2,200-year-old play written by an Alexandrian Jew featuring animal puppets and masks.
If you’re having trouble following, that’s to be expected. Playwright and director Edward Einhorn’s theater piece (or, if you prefer a classical theater pun, Seder play) Exagoge is an intricate ode to Jewish intertextual tradition. Running through May 12, it is inspired by Ezekiel the Tragedian’s 2nd or 3rd century BCE Greek-language play, Exagoge, a dramatization of the Exodus story that incorporated pagan elements and survives only in 269 lines over 17 fragments. (Exagoge has been fodder for Jewish theaters before, notably a 2016 production by Theatre Dybbuk in L.A.)
The framing device for an operatic revival of this text, considered the first Jewish play, is a contemporary Seder on the Upper West Side, presided over by patriarch Avraham (Maxwell Zener), a professor of Jewish history at Columbia.
Avraham’s composer son, Zeke (Hershel Blatt), shows up late with an unannounced date, Aliya (Meena Knowles). Immediately there is tension. Aliya is Muslim, Avraham is something of a Jewish chauvinist and Zeke is a knee jerk atheist for whom nothing is sacred, not the ineffable name of God or even a depiction of Muhammad. He’s considered presenting both in his opera of Exagoge, from which we see selections following the various parts of the Seder.
The modern trio on the upstage dais is mirrored by opera singers positioned between elevated tables. James Rodgers plays Moses with an inconsistent stutter, soprano Tharanga Goonetilleke is Tzipporah (who, in Zeke’s telling, doesn’t convert to her husband’s faith) and Matthew Curran doubles for Pharaoh and Moses’ father-in-law Reuel (a Jethro by any other name). The performers also hold staffs with masks, totems of their legendary characters’ faces, a Taymor-esque touch.
Avner Finberg did the music, sometimes Egyptian or Arabesque in its ornamentations, at others a modern chamber oratorio. It’s pleasant but not very memorable.
Together the modern dinner table drama and the epic sweep of the Exodus narrative realize the strangeness of the holiday’s edict to imagine ourselves as coming out of Egypt. Sand dune-esque set design by Tom Lee and Grace Needlman exists side-by-side with a slamming apartment door, underscoring the temporal contrast.
As Zeke plays the wicked son (and deadbeat boyfriend) and Avraham condescends to his guest, Aliya emerges as the only one not lost in the desert.
The way Einhorn has paced this evening is a feat in itself, finding moments to serve food (bites of the jammiest and best haroset I’ve ever had, Hillel sandwiches and gefilte nubs, White Cream Concord Manischewitz) and drama. In the Haggadot provided to audiences, lyrics are printed as well as a primer on Jewish life in Egypt. I was invited to read aloud about a synagogue erected under the rule of Alexander the Great.
Often a ritual act, say, the washing of hands, will connect with some moment in the Passover story, like Moses’ journey on the Nile. “Go forth and learn” becomes a duet in which Moses threatens to teach the Pharaoh a lesson. The matzo, introduced late for narrative purposes, gives us an aria called “Unleavened,” sung by Tzipporah as she bakes the bread of affliction.
But for all the pageantry — including some truly impressive puppetry from Tanya Khordoc and Barry Weil of Evolve Puppets — the modern story feels didactic. Einhorn’s choice to present a Look Who’s Coming to Dinner scenario to pair with Exagoge makes a certain intellectual sense, but doesn’t track as neatly as it should.
Ezekiel, who ended his play with the deus ex machina of a phoenix (a pagan symbol) lived in a multicultural milieu of Alexandrian Egypt and, as much as he may have upset Jewish elders for his apparent idolatry, he was plausibly reaching out to non-Jews by integrating their tradition, writing in Greek in an art form birthed in Athens.
But, to carry forward the analogy, substituting a 21st century Muslim woman for Ezekiel’s audience of ruling Hellenic polytheists doesn’t feel parallel, even if we make more of the interfaith union of Moses and Tzipporah in the Exodus story.
When Aliya, realizing she’s been brought to Seder to ruffle Avram’s feathers, says “I would have appreciated some warning I was going to be used as a prop,” we feel for her, and realize the playwright may be doing something similar.
Richer than a clash of cultures — which feels overstated when both cultural representatives hail from the Upper West Side — the project of Ezekiel the Tragedian’s efforts to assimilate his background feels like a richer contemporary theme. Einhorn also seems frustrated by his characters, giving them the only logical ending, but one that can’t help but feel anticlimactic.
But when you’re going through a Seder, joining in on Eliyahu Hanavi, and learning a bit more about the Jews of Elephantine, it’s hard not to enjoy yourself, even when Zeke and Avraham make you cringe.
There is no singing Dayenu, but if Einhorn and Finberg only delivered a diverting — and more or less complete Seder — it would have been enough.
Edward Einhorn’s Exagoge is playing at La MaMa Ellen Stewart Theatre through May 12. Tickets and more information can be found here.
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